ascii-transact-sql.md

title	ASCII (Transact-SQL) | Microsoft Docs
ms.custom
ms.date	07/24/2017
ms.prod	sql
ms.prod_service	database-engine, sql-database, sql-data-warehouse, pdw
ms.reviewer
ms.technology	t-sql
ms.topic	language-reference
f1_keywords	ASCII_TSQL ASCII
dev_langs	TSQL
helpviewer_keywords	ASCII function characters [SQL Server], ASCII code [SQL Server], ASCII leftmost character of expression
ms.assetid	45c2044a-0593-4805-8bae-0fad4bde2e6b
author	MashaMSFT
ms.author	mathoma
manager	craigg
monikerRange	>=aps-pdw-2016||=azuresqldb-current||=azure-sqldw-latest||>=sql-server-2016||=sqlallproducts-allversions||>=sql-server-linux-2017||=azuresqldb-mi-current

ASCII (Transact-SQL)

[!INCLUDEtsql-appliesto-ss2008-all-md]

Returns the ASCII code value of the leftmost character of a character expression.

Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions

Syntax

ASCII ( character_expression )  

Arguments

character_expression
An expression of type char or varchar.

Return types

int

Remarks

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It serves as a character encoding standard for modern computers. See the Printable characters section of ASCII for a list of ASCII characters.

Examples

This example assumes an ASCII character set, and returns the ASCII value for 6 characters.

SELECT ASCII('A') AS A, ASCII('B') AS B,   
ASCII('a') AS a, ASCII('b') AS b,  
ASCII(1) AS [1], ASCII(2) AS [2];  

[!INCLUDEssResult]

A           B           a           b           1           2  
----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------  
65          66          97          98          49          50  

See also

CHAR (Transact-SQL)
NCHAR (Transact-SQL)
UNICODE (Transact-SQL)
String Functions (Transact-SQL)